Google Home: Set Reminders Goes Live; Finally

Google Home is shaping up to be a winner for the #madebygoogle namesake. As actions on Google now begin to trickle down to third-party manufacturers and a rumored Google Home Mini may be on the horizon, the Assistant-enabled speaker still has room for improvement in the features department.

Of all the “actions” expected from the Google Assistant, setting a reminder has likely been the most requested and often griped as it has been lacking from inception.

The Day Has Come

Earlier today, Android Police reported that the Google Home support page added instructions for setting and managing reminders via the smart-speaker.

You can set, ask about, and delete reminders on Google Home. Notifications will appear on Google Home and your phone at the time you set. Location reminders are coming soon.

Google

At the time of publication, it was unclear when the long-awaited feature would go live. Presumably, a firmware update would soon arrive that would activate the function.

Surprisingly, a number of commenters have already reported the reminder feature working on Google Home as of today. I will be testing this feature shortly and will report back as to which firmware my device and app are running.

Currently, the reminder feature is only available in English in the U.S., U.K, Australia and Canada.

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About Gabriel Brangers

Lover of all things coffee. Foodie for life. Passionate drummer, hobby guitar player, Web designer and proud Army Veteran. I have come to drink coffee and tell the world of all things Chrome. “Whatever you do, Carpe the heck out of that Diem” – Roman poet, Horace. Slightly paraphrased.

From the October, 2017 print issue of WIRED : “Stop the Chitchat,” which doesn’t seem to be available online yet, but should be in the near future.

“Bert Brautigam is sick of having conversations with his devices. Like many of us, Brautigam, who works for the design firm Ziba, uses voice assistants like Google’s phone AI or Amazon’s Alexa. The theory is that voice commands make life more convenient. But these assistants are scripted to emulate everyday conversation. And everyday conversation is filled with little pauses and filler words, the “phatic” spackle of social interactions…. But when a bot does it, the chitchat clogs up the flow of command-and-action.

It is gradually driving Brautigam nuts — not just the bots’ tics, but the ratiocinations he has to go through to make them do, well, anything. “If I want to turn on the flashlight on my phone,” he says, “I say, ‘Turn on the flashlight.’ It’s four words, but all I should need is one word, right? ‘Flashlight!'”

I’m with Brautigam. I tolerate my Google Home, but in fact the only thing I ever use it for is to play music from Pandora. I don’t regret my purchase, as it does that one task really well, but I have no desire to talk to devices. Asking my GH to answer questions, give me the weather forecast, and tell jokes grew boring after the first week. If a new technology improves/simplifies my life, I will use it; if it adds needless complexity, I will ignore it.

This is great news indeed. I love how Google keeps adding features to the assistant.

I am deaf in one ear and seriously impaired in the other using a cochlear implant on the right and hearing aid on the left side. I wear a device called a Compilot to stream music and operate my Pixel phone, and this works great streaming direct to both of my devices.

Today, not sure why I did it, but I pressed and held the main button on my Compilot and low and behold the Google assistant answered. This is unreal as I’ve have seen nothing about this action in my Compilot users guide.

Not sure how Google pulled that off, but like the headphones just released, I now have a Google assistant button on my hearing device remote. Now I leave the phone in my pocket and just press the button on the Compilot that is on a lanyard around my neck and ask the assistant to call my wife, or navigate to Costco, or who won the Orioles game – just awesome!!! J